So you could hold an international arm wrestling contest (for example) over the dub dub dub. Very cool! might be a novel way to get the (very well funded) sports industry interested in physical computing. Not quite WWF, but I think it's got sex appeal

Daniel

two artists in Canada (of course ) did the telephonic arm-wrestling thing 21 years ago: Norman White and Doug Back.

Here's a photo of the piece: And a description:

Quote

Telephonic Arm Wrestling (1986). A collaborative telecommunications project undertaken by myself and fellow artist, Doug Back. The idea was to allow contestants in two different cities to arm-wrestle, using motorized force-transmitting systems interconnected by a telephone data link. First successfully exhibited during a 1986 link-up between the Canadian Cultural Centre, Paris, and the Artculture Resource Centre, Toronto. Sponsored by the McLuhan Programme (Director: Prof. Derrick DeKerkhove), University of Toronto. Materials: Steel, Plexiglas, motors, custom electronics. Owned by Doug Back and myself.

Check out Norman's site. He was doing twenty years ago some of the things that are being done today with Arduino and 'physical computing', but with TTL logic and 8080 processors, and sometimes even -GASP- no processor! and he publishes schematics for things.. here's the schematic for the arm-wrestler. In Canada these guys are seen as pioneers in the whole physical interaction-computing field.

Arm wrestling over the internet...did that while in Santa Clara. At the Tech Museum you'll find 2 arm wrestling stations that can link together or to another station in one of 5-6 museums across the US.

Damn near tore the ligaments in my elbow. Whatever I did, my arm was sore for over a week.

What about tank commander, but in IP/rc tanks with a cam on the turret, and historic battle scape's modeled to scale on a large platform - tanks would shoot water at each other, the winner is the first to short the opponents tank!